Posts Tagged ‘how to become a famous journalist’

As a guiding principle life shrinks and life expands in direct proportion to your willingness to assume risk.

Casey Neistat, filmmaker

There is a huge difference between making it within a system, and making it on your own terms.

Jostling along the path of freelance journalism, I’ve increasingly found that the clutch of bylines I’ve accumulated count for very little. All it means is that when I pitch or when I get emails out of the blue, from editors, I just have that little more cache.

It affords me more freedom; the ability to take up stories that really interest me. And take punts on travel.

Butyou will never make it.

Not as a freelance journalist.

But you may do as a bonafide writer. Or some other high-powered creative.

So how do you break out of the tiny little achievements that you get as a freelancer? By focusing less on the litany of tasks that require urgent deadlines, and focusing more on the slow long-term creative projects that once produced and completed will be of higher value.

Why?

Because that kind of work is hard. And harder to replicate.

That is how your define your own path.

This is a continuing series exploring the strategies of success of journalists and writers. Part one in the series can be found here – and here is the previous entry.

This is a continuing series exploring the strategies of success of journalists and writers. Parts one and two in the series can be found here and here.

Christopher Nolan is a film director with great power in Hollywood. He’s known for producing blockbuster movies – like his Dark Knight Batman trilogy – under budget and before deadline. Recently I read a brilliant profile of the British filmmaker written by Tom Shone; it’s an excellently reported piece.

What makes the article special is its description of Nolan’s commitment to his craft, emphasizing his abilities of focus to art and craft.

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Cal Newport’s blog focuses on how people achieve success by continually bettering their skills. It’s a must-read blog for me. One of his mantras, culled from comedian Steve Martin’s memoir, is: “Be so good they can’t ignore you”. Newport emphasizes that to be not just good, but truly great, to rise to the top where the best get unduly rewarded, you have to focus not just on improving your skills – a given – but to concentrate your efforts on projects that will generate massive returns.

I spend a lot of time reading. I like to consume and devour long articles and essays especially, like the ones found in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. I also like to read about the lives and careers of rising stars in journalism.

I had the opportunity to interview Nicole Tung in September. Tung is an American photojournalist and a war photographer. She went to Syria where she smuggled herself into the country, hung out with rebels, saw mercenaries from Libya and Oman, and was a witness to bombing and carnage.

Her first experience of war came a few years earlier. Here is someone who took herself to Libya, without assignment and of her own accord. She was 24 and barely out of college. She went for the experience.

Quite a lot has been written about the amount of photojournalists, green and sometimes shooting with iPhones, who made their name during that conflict. And the dangers are very real. Everyone needs to start somewhere.

During that interview with Nicole, I was intimidated. Here is someone who is fearless, deeply concerned about the plight of those caught in conflict, but also someone deeply ambitious.

Or consider Michael Hastings. Hastings died in a car accident at the age of 33. He was a Rolling Stone writer and a senior reporter for BuzzFeed. A hard worker and tenacious, he wrote a profile of General Stanley McChrystal, a NATO commander, that, through his patient and intimate reporting, led to the General’s resignation. Here’s someone who worked extremely hard and has the bravery to challenge those around him.

Or consider Paul Salopek who is spending seven years walking. Walking over 20,000 km around the world, covering early humans’ migration out of Africa, for the National Geographic. Sometimes, the best journalism is slow journalism.

These are people who take risks. It is not the only way. Brilliance flourishes in quiet, unassuming ways too. But ambition speaks. The willingness to work hard speaks. But perhaps the desire and the effort used to take yourself out of your comfort zone matters most of all.

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This is a continuing series exploring the strategies of success of journalists and writers. Parts one and three in the series can be found here and here.

About

Lu-Hai Liang has been published in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, CNN, Aljazeera, New Statesman, The Atlantic, WIRED, and many more. He is a freelance journalist who lived for six years in Beijing, but is now recovering elsewhere. You can learn more about him here.

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